


Waiting Game

by fojee



Series: Endless Tale [2]
Category: Japanese Drama, 臨床犯罪学者 火村英生の推理 | Himura Hideo no Suiri | Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6422632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/pseuds/fojee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But it wasn't a dream. Himura had come for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

> Episode ten, basically. Also my own version of what happened at the dam. (Unrealistic for him to escape unscathed I know.) 
> 
> I was planning on porn guys, but it just wouldn't come. (Pun unintended!)

Being used against Himura left a bad taste in Alice's mouth. He struggled harder against the ropes tying him to the chair. He wasn't afraid for himself. But when Moroboshi whispered into his ear, "I want to see Himura's true character," her words were like needles of ice penetrating his heart.

When Alice succeeded in tipping the chair over, his head hit the ground. He sees Himura reaching for him, and for a moment mistakes it for a dream. If his hands had been free, they would have reached out--

But it wasn't a dream. Himura had come for him.

\---

Alice didn't want to go home to his place tonight. He was a little afraid to be alone with his thoughts. So they sat in Tokie-san's living room, his right knee almost touching Himura's left.

"I put you into danger," Himura spoke. His words sounded like an apology. 

Alice's lips tightened at the corners. "A detective's assistant naturally meets danger," he said in an attempt at levity. Of all the labels Himura had used to introduce him to people, that one he had always rankled. Granted, 'assisting' can adequately describe his job whenever they solve crimes. But away from that, he liked to think they were on equal footing.

In a further attempt to distract Himura from the morose direction of his thoughts, Alice brought up one of his favourite topics: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

"What kind of relationship do they have?" Himura surprised him by asking. The man usually tuned him out when he started on this particular spiel. "Not just as detective and assistant?"

"Of course," Alice said. "They risk their life for each other. Whatever it is goes beyond friendship."

"What about us?" At those words, Alice's felt a familiar weight behind his rib cage. 

So he repeated Himura's own words, colouring them with an almost self-deprecating tone. "Not just detective and assistant."

"Then what?" Himura's intense eyes met his.

Alice took a breath. "What do you think?"

"Someone I know," Himura answered.

Alice exhaled. Then spoke a little too loud. "You hurt my feelings!" Even though he knew Himura didn't really mean it.

They both found words inadequate. So why was Himura pushing this now? 

"I would have thought a novelist could do better than that."

So Alice made something up. "You're a fellow passenger on a boat. Either I rely on your strength to steer us on, or I keep an eye on you in case you take an axe to the bottom." It was a piss-poor metaphor and they both knew it.

_Either you're my saviour, or my killer._

Then Himura's tone turned grave. "I promise you I'll never put you in danger."

Alice sensed the turmoil his friend was in. And he did something he would later regret. He told Himura Hideo about Moriarty and 'The Final Problem.'

\---

Himura Hideo left him behind at the police station. 

Alice was just working himself up to a panic when he sees the man. Moroboshi's dog dressed like a janitor, his Shangrila tattoo peeking out from under his left sleeve. 

And then the bomb went off.

By the time he came to, Detective Nabeshima had found him, and helped him back to the room with the others. His whole body felt bruised from the impact. Nobody was killed outright, but there were a lot of injuries from the debris or from hitting walls or furniture. Some were more serious than others. He didn't bother to get himself checked out, though his head throbbed.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that he find Himura. And when he does, he'll shake some sense into the bastard.

\---

He may have lost control a little (a lot) in the ride with the ambulance, shouting at the man lying on the gurney. "Why did you do that? Wake up and tell me what happened!" 

But his whole body felt like a cramped muscle, and he was only able to relax when Himura opened his eyes and complained. "You're too loud!"

\---

Himura gave his explanations sitting up on his hospital bed. He met with Moroboshi and played a game of chicken. Or at least that was how it seemed to Alice. Who was more clever, who was more self-destructive... It made him grit his teeth.

Then Tokie-san clapped her hands. "Let's leave them alone." She pointed at Alice and Himura, smiling knowingly when Alice turned red. She herded everybody else out the door. "Have a nice time!" She called out as she left.

"If I didn't want to get into danger, I wouldn't be with you," Alice said in a voice as steady as he could manage. "So don't leave me alone anymore."

But even as he spoke, he could see Himura's mind was elsewhere. With her. "She might have given me a chance because she wants to play with me again."

Alice thought he understood criminals enough to write about them. But this was the first time he could agree with the idea that some people _needed_ killing.

People like Moroboshi Sanae.

He lightened his voice with effort. "Anyway the case is closed. Why don't you get some rest. I'm happy that you returned safe. Ja ne," he said with his back to Himura. He knew the other man would be able to read his thoughts on his face right now.

With the door closed behind him, he leaned against it, trying to catch his breath.

\---

And then Moroboshi had escaped. When Alice got wind of it, he ran full-tilt back to Himura's room. 

It was empty, but for a note on the table.

_To a true friend, please forgive me for putting an end to this incident by myself._

His nightmare unfolded in his mind's eye. 

And it wouldn't disappear. Not when they got word of the two at Tenma Valley, near the dam.

They were still scrambling up the side of the mountain when Alice heard it. Two gunshots. 

It felt like an injection of pure adrenaline. Alice forgot his trembling legs as he hurried onwards, upwards. But there was nothing to find at the edge overlooking the raging waters. A single cigarette butt, still smouldering. Nothing else.

Nothing else.

\---

But he knew how it ended. Or more importantly, he knew how it didn't end. How in the stories, Holmes came back into Watson's life, by appearing to him as an old woman. 

Even though it didn't seem possible no matter how much he wracked his brain, his heart told him otherwise. Alice couldn't give up on the idea that Himura could just walk into Tokie-san's living room. 

He hadn't been back to his own place in days. And he pretended it was for Tokie-san's sake. 

He went to sleep on Himura's bed, surrounded by his books and papers. It was stupid to be grateful that the man was a smoker. The scent of tobacco clung to his sheets. And yet it just underscored Himura's absence. After that first time, Alice couldn't cry. He felt like an arid desert. 

He wrote to keep sane. Their stories would never end, he decided. He had been loathe to write himself in a novel. It seemed too arrogant somehow. But now he was sketching out an outline of how the two of them met and became friends and then solved a crime together. Fiction would have to be more exciting than reality. 

Would he have to rely on fiction to see and talk to Himura Hideo for the rest of his days?

\---

And then one day, just an ordinary day on the calendar, he heard the door slide open.

Tokie-san cried out, and reached for the ghost standing there. She beat her fists on his chest, while Alice stood like he had been struck dumb. 

He looked the same as ever. He was in the same clothes, his tie loose around his neck. And yet, beneath that, Alice could see that Himura held himself carefully. He reached out, and then pulled back. He was afraid; if he started touching Himura now, he might not be able to stop.

Instead, he shadowed him, hovering while Tokie-san plied him with coffee and biscuits. And then when it became obvious even to Tokie-san that Himura's energy was flagging, she stood up, her hands fluttering in the air like birds. "Go on up to your room, sensei! You can tell us everything later. Help him up, Alice, won't you?"

It was a ploy, of course, to give him an excuse to trudge up the stairs after Himura. 

\---

The bedcovers were rumpled, but Alice refused to look guilty. It wasn't the first time he had stayed over after all; Himura usually took the couch downstairs unless Alice was typing all night. Himura didn't seem to notice it. He shrugged off his coat and removed his tie before sitting down heavily on the side of the bed, the smile on his face disappearing like mist.

Without the coat, he looked rail-thin and vulnerable. "How badly are you hurt?" Alice asked, grabbing Himura's chair from the desk and bringing it closer. He didn't dare voice it within Tokie-san's hearing.

"I'm fine," Himura said absently, waving a hand in his direction. That's when Alice saw it, an abrasion on his wrist. It looked raw and just beginning to heal at the edges.

"What happened to you?" He asked, even though he was afraid of the answer. He had grabbed Himura's hand without realizing it; he turned it over to examine the wound more closely.

Instead of answering, Himura slumped further on the bed. 

"Himura?" Alice said, trying to catch his gaze.

"It was like the poisoned cups all over again," Himura finally spoke. "She was pulling my strings. It didn't matter what I chose; she would win either way."

"What are you saying?" Alice asked through the lump in his throat.

Himura hung his head, letting the hair cover his eyes. "She got her wish. She turned me into a murderer." He got a distant look in his eye. "I cuffed myself to her. I pushed the two of us over to where I knew there were rocks and shrubs to break our fall. And then we hit the water and I held her head down even as the current dashed us against the rocks."

His throat went dry. "So she's really--?" 

"Moroboshi Sanae is dead. And I have her body to prove it. It's already with Nabeshima."

"Good," Alice blurted out. "If you hadn't done it, I would have."

"You don't really mean that," Himura said flatly.

The strain was visible in his friend's mouth and around his eyes. So Alice took a deep breath. "How many murderers have you caught, Himura? And how many of them were fighting for their lives in the process? How many of them did it to protect the people they--" _They loved,_ his mind supplied the rest. 

"Murder is murder no matter the reason. And I crossed that line," Himura said.

"Tell me something, did you enjoy it?" Alice knew his voice was rising in pitch, and he tried to control himself with effort. "Did you enjoy killing her?"

Himura had to think about it. What he did wasn't beautiful. And he had so many things in his mind that pleasure didn't even figure in the matter. "No."

Alice nodded like he expected that answer. "You can make fiction black and white. You can make heroes clean and pure, and villains unrelentingly terrible. But reality is another matter."

"Is that really what you think?" Himura murmured.

"I think," Alice said slowly. "If you trusted the police to be able to hold her, Moroboshi would still be alive today. You did what you had to." Then in a whisper, he added, "If you give in now, then she really has won." 

Himura closed his eyes. "I know. Thank you, Alice."

Alice gently pushed him down on the bed. "Get some rest. I'll keep watch." He thought about writing again, but he left his laptop downstairs, and he couldn't bear to let the other man out of his sight. 

Himura made a sound, and scooted closer to the wall. "Come on," he said impatiently.

Alice hesitated. They've never done this before. But he obeyed Himura's summons and laid down beside him. At first his body was stiff, and he didn't know what to do with his hands. 

But then, Himura curled up against him, his head leaning on Alice's shoulder. His hand slid into Alice's, their fingers tangling. "Stay with me tonight."

"Always," Alice answered before he could think about it. The word hung in the air for a moment.

Then Himura's hand squeezed his. "I'll hold you to that," he said, voice hoarse. 

\---

Where one led, the other followed--

To sleep, to beautiful dreams, and much later, to wake to a morning that was new and fresh and full of everything.

\---

They still didn't talk about it. 

Was it strange that in this instance, Alice did not require words? Himura's attention was enough. He felt those eyes on him like rays of the sun. That smile, too--the real one--directed at him, felt like a particularly filling meal.

And now--

Now when Himura touched him, it was with intent. Fingers trailing across the back of his neck, making him shiver. A hand on his thigh under the table. He was sure Tokie-san knew the reason for his frequent blushing. 

And at night, cradling his face, Himura would kiss him. Slow and exploratory, with care and purpose, cataloguing his every reaction. Alice was the one with the experience. He had had girlfriends and boyfriends all through high school and college. And yet he followed the other man's lead, letting himself be swept away. 

Wordlessly, playfully, and then joyfully, they loved each other.

**Author's Note:**

> The last line was courtesy of the last book I just read, a Star Trek novel by Vonda McIntyre. :)


End file.
